Sunday, February 7, 2010

Bad Wednesday

Still snow and cold, but not as much as last week. I was lucky with the trains all days except Friday afternoon, when there was a somewhat chaotic situation at the station in Lund. There were three northbound trains scheduled to depart, but none of them did. At least not even close to the estimated time. One train had the doors open, the display listed Helsingborg and everything looked like normal. About 20 minutes after the departure time, there was a message saying that the train didn't have a driver and they didn't know where he was..... I got out (along with a few hundred others) and went over to another platform, where another train was standing. After waiting another 20 minutes it actually left, and no one knows how delayed that train really was.

Wednesday was a day no one at my department cares to remember. It started already before I had arrived at work. When I got out of the bus near the library, it was so slippery that I fell face down right into a pile of snow. I didn't turn around to see the other passenger's reactions, but I can imagine it. No harm done, luckily. Since the weather is so bad, I can't drive the car at work. I have no experience driving in these conditions, and it means that another colleague has done all the storage rounds this entire year. This Wednesday he was particularly upset, and I don't blame him. It wasn't plowed at one of the storages and he got stuck there. When he got out of the car to retrieve the books, he realized that he had his own house keys with him - not the storage keys. He had big trouble getting out, but managed to drive back to the library to get the right keys. When he returned it was plowed. At the third storage there was a big garbage truck blocking the way, and there was no driver in it. He waited for five minutes, then gave up and went to the fourth storage. When he got back to the third, it was clear way, but he couldn't find the two clipping collections that someone had requested. He was in a really bad mood when he got back to the library. In the afternoon he went back to the third storage again, this time bringing another colleague and the print out of the catalogue card. They found one of the collections, and then he gave me the not so pleasant job of explaining to the patron that we couldn't locate all the material, even though it's in the catalogue.

This weekend has been a slow one. I have been out a few times to get groceries. Mostly I have searched the internet for information about events that Olga wrote about in her almanacs. I found a very interesting account of the events in Sweden during World War II. It matched with the dates and information Olga had written. Since her family was involved in shipping, she especially noted when ships had been lost. She also wrote about the Jewish refugees arriving in Halmstad, the American planes that had made emergency landings there and all the different ration cards she had to get. She sold cheese in the square and also had to get a special license in order to continue. Reading her almanacs is like visiting a different era.